Happenin’
Places › Georgia › Metro Atlanta › Atlanta History Center
Atlanta History Center, photo 1 of 3

Photo: DividedFrame / CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Attractions

Atlanta History Center

Atlanta, GA · Metro Atlanta$$Adults $31 weekdays, $35 weekends; kids 4 to 12 $27 to $31

About

At the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead, a tunnel under the diorama brings you up inside the Cyclorama, a 49-foot-tall painting of the Battle of Atlanta. Seventeen German artists painted it in Milwaukee in five months, and it debuted in Minneapolis in 1886. A 12-minute film is projected onto it every hour from 10 to 3. The historic houses, including Philip Trammell Shutze's 1928 Swan House, don't open until 11, and the whole place is closed Mondays. On Saturdays at 2 the sheep from Smith Farm, Atlanta's oldest surviving farmhouse, take a walk across the campus.

Highlights

Cyclorama: The Battle of Atlanta, 49 feet tall1928 Swan HouseThe Texas locomotive in LocomotionSmith Farm and its Saturday sheep strollQuarry Garden of native plants

Getting there

130 West Paces Ferry Road NW, Atlanta, GA 30305

Related places

College Football Hall of Fame Attractions

College Football Hall of Fame

Atlanta, GA · Metro Atlanta$$

A three-story wall of 768 helmets greets you at the door, one for every program in the college game, and the one from your school lights up when you register at the entrance. The…

Center for Puppetry Arts Attractions

Center for Puppetry Arts

Atlanta, GA · Metro Atlanta$$

Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog cut the ribbon here in 1978, and the building has been the country's largest home for puppetry ever since. The Worlds of Puppetry Museum holds the…

Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum Attractions

Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum

Atlanta, GA · Metro Atlanta$

The Oval Office at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta is a life-size replica, with a reproduction of the Resolute desk. The Camp David Meetings get a…

More in Metro Atlanta

Others worth the drive in this corner of Georgia.

All of Metro Atlanta →
The Varsity Attractions

The Varsity

Atlanta, GA · Metro Atlanta

"What'll ya have? What'll ya have?" is how the counter crew greets you at The Varsity, across the I-75/85 Connector from Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Frank Gordy opened it in 1928 as…

Georgia State Capitol Attractions

Georgia State Capitol

Atlanta, GA · Metro AtlantaFree

The first gold on the Georgia State Capitol's dome was donated by Dahlonega and Lumpkin County, and in 1958 mule-drawn wagons hauled 43 ounces of it to Atlanta. The building is…

Margaret Mitchell House Attractions

Margaret Mitchell House

Atlanta, GA · Metro Atlanta

Margaret Mitchell wrote most of Gone with the Wind in a two-room ground-floor apartment at 10th and Peachtree in Midtown Atlanta, and called it "the Dump." She started with the…

The Big Chicken Attractions

The Big Chicken

Marietta, GA · Metro Atlanta

A 56-foot steel rooster towers over Cobb Parkway with a yellow beak that opens and shuts and eyes that roll, a roadside KFC sign that has marked the spot since 1963. Locals give…

High Museum of Art Attractions

High Museum of Art

Atlanta, GA · Metro Atlanta$$

Richard Meier's 1983 building and three more that Renzo Piano added in 2005 house the High Museum of Art on Peachtree Street in Atlanta. Piano's buildings more than doubled the…

The Wren's Nest Attractions

The Wren's Nest

Atlanta, GA · Metro Atlanta$

In this Queen Anne Victorian in Atlanta's West End, journalist Joel Chandler Harris wrote the Uncle Remus tales that carried Br'er Rabbit and the briar patch into American…

Part of these collections

Georgia Attractions45 places

Georgia Attractions

Nearly half of these Georgia attractions are in two cities, 14 in Atlanta and eight in Savannah. Some of the rest take ten minutes, like the 56-foot Big Chicken on Cobb Parkway or the oak in Athens that legally owns itself.